Uh yes it is. You get 3 stacks from each cast of Penance. If the soaker has more stacks of Torment, you gain more stacks of Vital Spark (I think it's 1 extra Spark stack for every 4/5 stacks of Torment)

Uh yes it is. You get 3 stacks from each cast of Penance. If the soaker has more stacks of Torment, you gain more stacks of Vital Spark (I think it's 1 extra Spark stack for every 4/5 stacks of Torment)

Unfortunately penance only gives ONE (1) stack per tick of the penance no matter what amount of stacks the soaker has. It will always give 3 stacks, never more. At the begging of a fight your best bet is to PI/hero and just use flash heals. The PW:S Glyph will also give you stacks, so use that at the very end before your spriest's 25 stacks disappear.

The fight is very easy with 2 healers that are competent. We do it every week with disc/rdruid. Although with the nerfs that just hit im sure the dps requirements are not nearly as high from each players as they once were.

Shields do work, you probably not stacking correctly if you don't notice the insane absorbs. Also if someone drops because your heals are to slow you're doing it wrong.

The way decimation works is dealing the larger of its base damage or 90% of the tanks health. (Not sure what it is after the nerfs, but its a big hit, regardless) It cannot be resisted or blocked, but it can be parried/dodged/absorbed. Disc shields are amazing for this as they can soak huge chunks of the attack.

The real trick is making sure you get a buffed shield on the tank rather than a normal one. You'll need to throw one direct heal before you shield to ensure you have Vital Flame up to affect the shield. If you shield first, you'll swap buffs from spark to flame, but the shield itself will still sit in the unbuffed 20-30k range.

Unfortunately penance only gives ONE (1) stack per tick of the penance no matter what amount of stacks the soaker has. It will always give 3 stacks, never more.

I was so sure you were wrong I went and browsed our logs. Turns out, I'm wrong. According to the logs you do only get one stack per Penance tick regardless of Torment stacks. Good to know, it's something I hadn't picked up in the past.

Penance used to give as many stacks per tick as other heals did but it was fixed very early, that's probably why you thought it still did. Normally if you check something and there's no hotfix notes you'll assume it still works the same way unless you're getting problems because of it.